Perfecting Content Flow

This episode of the IAMN: I Am Northbound podcast is brought to you by The 4D Songwriter: How to Dominate the New Music Industry. Get your copy of this game-changing book at the4dsongwriter.com.

Episode Summary

In episode #20 of IAMN: I am Northbound, Jayson talks about;

How to take advantage of an Instagram Stories hashtag hack, how to get ‘free exposure’ by leveraging comments and how to make sure your content flows correctly.

Instagram Stories Hidden Hashtags

In this segment of IAMN: I Am Northbound, I show you a new, secret way to get more exposure on your Instagram stories. This little trick works ever since the last algorithm update — But who knows when it will be fixed? I recommend that you take advantage of it before it’s patched.

Overview

It’s looking like hashtags on stories bring more exposure…

But the latest Instagram update removed the functionality of the little exposure trick that allowed you to hide 20 hashtags behind stickers or images.

However, it doesn’t take long for people to figure out ways around the changes!

I’d recommend that you take advantage of this now, because it may be patched soon in a future update.

This is just a brief overview — if you want the full explanation and additional tricks and tips, check out this segment on IGTV or on the IAMN podcast (link in bio).

This is how you do it:

First, open a new story (duh).

Second, create a plain colour background (This method doesn’t really work for videos, so make sure you’re doing it on a story with a plain colour background).

Next, put down 10 relevant hashtags. You can’t use any more than 10, so make sure they are relevant to your post — the perfect hashtag will describe your post and also will be what your desired listeners will be browsing.

Now, change the colour of your text to be your background colour by using the eye dropper tool and tapping on your background.

Voila! Invisible hashtags. It’s like they were never there.

Conversations are Free Exposure

All music artists should be taking advantage of whatever they can. After all, the world of social media is already stacked against you. Yet, there’s something I noticed that most music artists are doing that is literally leaving free exposure on the table. In this segment, I tell you exactly what that is — And how you can use it to get your content seen in more feeds.

Overview

To make sure you get the most exposure for your music, you must understand how the algorithm works.

I can’t explain everything in this caption, though — so if you want the full explanation and additional tricks and tips, check out this segment on IGTV or on the IAMN podcast (link in bio).

The algorithm looks for good content to display to more and more people.

How it determines ‘good content’ is by finding content that has a lot of engagement.

It assumes that engagement = content people want to see.

You can’t force people to like, share, save or even comment —

But you can leverage the comments you do get to gain more of a ‘positive score’ with the algorithm and get your post seen by more people.

How? It’s simple.

When someone comments on your post, regardless of whether it is a thoughtful, well formed sentence or three emojis left by a bot, reply back with a comment that contains more than five words and asks them a question that they can’t answer with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response.

It seems that any comment over five words is considered a ‘real’ comment by Instagram, so you want their replies to be longer than five words, also.

When they reply, you reply — and ask them another question at the end.

This allows you to not only build more engagement on your profile, but also get to know your listeners and build a sense of community, too.

Perfecting Content Flow

In this segment, I want to show you how you can ensure that your listeners are able to develop maximum connection with you. Are you offering additional content to those that engage with what you offer? And if you are, are you positioning your content flow for a maximum level of engagement? I would assume not. But if you watch this episode, I’ll show you how.

Overview

If you want true fans, you need to build connection — and to build connection you’ll need to ensure your content flow is perfectly optimised.

I can’t explain everything in this caption, though — so if you want the full explanation and additional tricks and tips, check out this segment on IGTV or on the IAMN podcast (link in bio).

Most artists aren’t positioning relevant content correctly in their content flow.

What is content flow? It’s the content you recommend your listener engages in next after they consume the piece of content you’ve just driven them to.

You must consider what you direct them to.

If it’s not relevant, they’ll quit out and you’ll lose their attention.

If it’s more of the same thing, they might quit out due to being bored of that specific type of content.

For example, say you link someone to your new music video.

You’d think that it would be good to recommend them another music video to watch next, right?

Probably not.

Your listener didn’t click through to watch that music video because they were interested in watching a music video —

They clicked because they wanted to listen to the song and see the video that goes along with it.

So, maybe recommend them the live version of that song next?

Always think of the user’s perspective.

But you won’t know until you test —

So track your links to see the CTR (click through rate) of each of your links.

And you should always be optimising your content flows.

You can watch this episode above or on IGTV.

Or you can listen to it on your favourite podcast platform!

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